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As White House Backs Device Unlocking, 4.6 Million iPad Jailbreakers Left In Legal Limbo

President Obama wants you to be able to choose the wireless carrier for your mobile device. But install the wrong software on it, and you might still be a criminal.

The White House scored points with cellphone users Monday by voicing its support for a petition against new regulations that make it illegal for consumers to “unlock” cellphones, altering their software restrictions so that they can be used on a different wireless network from the one that the phone’s vendor initially intended. But some in the digital rights community have pointed out that the White House’s pro-unlocking stance neglects to defend users who want to hack their own devices in a different manner: “Jailbreaking” or “rooting” Apple’s iPads and other tablets to install unauthorized software on them may still be illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, (DMCA) the same law that currently prevents carrier unlocking.

“The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties,” reads the White House’s statement. “In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones.”

The statement goes on to describe how carrier unlocking helps to ensure a “vibrant, competitive wireless market.” But it doesn’t extend its support to jailbreaking devices to allow users to install whatever applications they want, rather than the walled garden of software approved by the device’s vendor, such as Apple’s App Store.

Last year the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation applied to the Library of Congress for an exemption to the DMCA that would allow users to unlock, jailbreak and root their own devices. But while an exemption for jailbreaking phones was approved, unlocking phones’ ties to a specific wireless carrier was left out of that exemption, as was any protection for jailbreaking tablet computers.

That means that aside from the phone unlocking controversy addressed in the White House’s statement, close to 4.6 million iPad owners who have jailbroken their devices are left in a state of legal limbo. Jay Freeman, the administrator of the app store for jailbroken Apple devices known as Cydia, says his software market received that number of visits from jailbroken iPads in just the last month, a growing number driven in part by the release of a new tool known as Evasion that removes download restrictions on the latest versions of the iPhone and iPad. He argues that those iPad jailbreakers also need legal protection from the DMCA, whose anti-tampering provision theoretically criminalizes both jailbreaking tablets and unlocking phones.

“It’s important to realize that the [White House's statement] is very narrow,” says Freeman. “We definitely need a different campaign, one that focuses on the root problem: that the DMCA’s 1201 anti-tampering clause is confusing, limiting and generally really annoying.”

In fact, that lack of interest may be a result of users’ feelings of invulnerability. No iPad owner has been sued or prosecuted yet for hacking a tablet in the privacy of his or own home. But creators of jailbreaking tools, like the hackers who coded the recently released evasi0n tool, may be more vulnerable, says Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “These popular tools that millions of people use might still leave people legally liable,” says Higgins. “Even if they’re not doing it yet, giving companies the legal power to abuse these laws makes me a little uneasy.”

The ban on jailbreaking tablets, like the one preventing phone unlocking, could be abolished with the same sort of three-year exemption that has made jailbreaking phones legal. But Higgins, like Cydia-maker Freeman, says that a better approach would be a comprehensive rewriting of the DMCA’s restriction on how consumers can use and hack their own devices, an update to the “anti-circumvention” measure originally designed to stop users from breaking the digital locks that prevented music and video piracy.

“This is a symptom. The underlying problem is the anticircumvention provision,” says Higgins. “And that works against consumers’ interests every day.”

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I’d like to know why my cable company requires me to have a cable box even though I dont need it, then billing me for it. When I moved in I got all the channel without it for a trial period , just by attaching the cable directly to my tv. Seems the only reason for the box is to prevent cable theft, which they could stop just my sending a pulse through the line like they already do to catch stolen cable, only a box is easier and faster for them.

I was one of the 114,000+ petition signers and hope these changes are forthcoming to DMCA 1201. The authority for this is under the Library of Congress and they continue to stand by their opinion that making these changes would not be in the best intrest. Best interest of whom? The consumer or the cell phone carriers who pushed heavily for this change to block unlocking and rooting. Just another way for the carriers to sell more cell phones.